New "From the Trenches" article by Chris Vandersluis: "Dashboard directions"

We're happy to announce the publish of a new white paper by Chris Vanderluis of HMS Software for the "From the Trenches" column in the Project Server 2010 TechCenter and the Project Server 2007 TechCenter. This latest white paper - "Dashboard directions" - describes some of the common challenges you may face when deciding to use dashboards in your EPM environment. It describes how the prettiness of a professional-looking dashboard might sometimes hide the need for users to look into the quality of the data — "pedigree" and updated data, for example. It mentions how data for dashboards should go through an approval process to ensure high data quality and completeness. It includes a few techniques to prevent people from skewing data under their control to misrepresent the data that is displayed in the dashboard. Additionally, it states some basic rules you should take into consideration when you create dashboards for EPM. Make sure to look at this and other white papers in the From the Trenches column, as they are sure to provide you helpful insight into deploying and using Project Server in your environment.

Here is some bio information about the author:

Chris Vandersluis is the president and founder of Montreal, Canada–based HMS Software, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. He has an economics degree from McGill University and over 27 years’ experience in the automation of project control systems. He is a long-standing member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and helped found the Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec chapters of the Microsoft Project Users Group (MPUGA). Publications for which Chris has written include Fortune, Heavy Construction News, Computing Canada magazine, and PMI’s PMNetwork, and he is a regular columnist for Project Times. He teaches Advanced Project Management at McGill University and often speaks at project management association functions across North America and around the world. HMS Software is the publisher of the TimeControl project-oriented timekeeping system and has been a Microsoft Project Solution Partner since 1995.